A Case for Repetition
by Linda McCullough Moore
We see a rainbow, several actually,
through the spritzing hiss of water
from the bandaged garden hose.
I'm watering the new October grass.
Later, walking, we see two, clear, gray
shadows on the macadam just ahead.
"They're us," I say, but we know better.
"See, I'll step on my shadow's head,"
Later still, I’ll say, "Today, we saw
two things, a rainbow and a shadow.
Which do you like best?"
My child knows no other family
of question. And I, I do not know what
other mothers ask their sons at night.
"I like shadows," I say. "I like rainbows,"
is the way he answers me. We're telling
truth. I do like shadows. And I'm not averse
to mirrors or fifteen-minute-old reflections
in deep pools of water; boats and sky and
trees, only better on reflection, like a shadow:
repetitious, not like the one-time
rainbow of a thing.
I can see through rainbows, I am never taken in
the way I am by mirrors, images of images, and
always, always by a shadow. At creation God
invented repetition, and nothing has been done
just once since then.
As for the invention of the rainbow,
God waited until Noah was a man
of fifty-six, and the whole world
had sinned on purpose. Then God
created smaller families, and new
forms of mold as they occurred to
Him, and almost as an afterthought,
the rainbow.
Ah, but shadows, shadows He created
on Day One. Let there be light, He said,
then shading, softening, he gave a second
way of looking at a thing.
Winner of the Pushcart Prize, Linda McCullough Moore, is the author of a novel, two story collections, a collection of essays, and more than 400 shorter works. Teacher and mentor, she loves helping other writers, and is hard at work on a poetry collection.
